1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to computers, and more particularly to deduplicated caching of queries for green IT management in a computer storage device.
2. Description of the Related Art
In today's society, computer systems are commonplace. Computer systems may be found in the workplace, at home, or at school. Computer systems may include data storage systems, or disk storage systems, to process and store data. A storage system may include various storage components, such as one or more disk drives configured in a storage environment. For example, the storage environment may include a number of disk drives implemented in an array, such as a Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) topology, to provide data security in the event of a hardware or software failure. The storage environment may also include other storage components, such as controllers and interfaces to mange the flow of data.
Computer system management requires information about computer components and network components, the state of each of those items, and their relationships. This information may include discovery of networks, network paths, computers, operating systems, file systems, network cards, installed applications, application components, user transactions, statistics of usage, and other information. There are many different approaches for discovering and retrieving portions of this information from a computer network and its components and for making this information available to clients. The Common Information Model (CIM) is an industry standard model defined by Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), which enables administrators or software management programs to control applications and devices on heterogeneous platforms in an uniform and inter-operable way. Due to the generic architecture of CIM, it has been widely used in management software, which manages various kinds of storage and network devices. Information is made available through the CIM model by a CIM Object Manager (CIMOM). A CIMOM may maintain information within its repository, and a CIMOM may also be extended with additional information by adding provider plug-ins. CIM has become a common denominator for instrumentation and relationships within the software industry.
The CIMOM or CIM Agent has become almost the standard management interface of all modern day devices. Generally, CIM Agent(s) are queried by one or many management server(s) in a data center for centralized uniform management. For example, CIM Agent(s) of servers, network switches, storage subsystems, tape libraries etc. are queried by system management software such as Director to provide a end-to-end correlated view for seamless centralized management of the data center.